


Triumph or Death

by ashitanoyuki



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Attempted Kidnapping, Badass Pidge, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, For hostage purposes, Gen, Haxus POV, Minor appearances from Allura and Coran, Minor appearances from all the paladins, Once the reveal is made, Season 1 Episode 5, Take care if that will be upsetting, i have no idea how to tag this, in that the galra canonically used he pronouns for Pidge in these episodes, lurking in the vents, minor misgendering, survival fic, until then we are working in limited POV and therefore the pronouns are incorrect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 03:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12123813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashitanoyuki/pseuds/ashitanoyuki
Summary: Haxus did not die when he fell from the generator room catwalk. His survival presents an opportunity to gather useful information for the Galra Empire.





	Triumph or Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wisttic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wisttic/gifts).



> Gift fic for Wisttic, who loves his purple cat alien with a fervor that I do not understand - but far be it from me to reject a gen prompt for a minor character.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, a distant part of him thought as he teetered at the edge of the Altean ship’s balcony. He was a soldier of the Galra Empire, he had helped conquer worlds, he had taken on foes from species known for their size and ferocity and come out a conqueror. It was incomprehensible that he would meet his demise at the hands of a _child_ , and one from a weak and primitive species, at that.

And then he was falling, a seemingly endless drop. It may be incomprehensible, he realized, and yet it was happening.

Triumph or death. He’d assumed that triumph would be the inevitable outcome of this battle.

Something cracked as he hit the ground, and the world faded to black.

* * *

Consciousness returned in fits and spurts, temporary periods of blinding pain followed by increasingly short periods of blissful nothingness. It was almost tempting to give into the nothingness, but Haxus had not risen through the ranks to become Sendak’s second by giving up. He fought for consciousness, clinging to each burst of pain and discomfort until, finally, he reached some sort of true wakefulness. He lay still, his eyes closed, and took stock of his wounds.

His bodily condition was… undesirable, he finally concluded. By some miracle, he had feeling and movement in all his limbs, but his right leg and left arm shrieked with pain at every movement. Broken, he concluded. If he focused hard, he could hear the thrumming of the castle’s mechanical systems with his right ear, but not his left.

Finally, Haxus opened his eyes to take stock of his surroundings.

It was obvious at a glance how he had survived. Rather than landing on the unforgiving metal ground, he was caught high above it on a mesh platform of sorts, which, judging by the dents surrounding him, had just enough give to keep the majority of his bones intact. The purpose of the platform wasn’t immediately obvious, but after some time squinting into the gloom, he realized that above the platform rose a ladder leading from one of the ship’s vents; the platform itself provided access to another vent. He bit back a groan as he forced himself to sit, grimacing as the platform creaked threateningly beneath him.

The green paladin’s little drone lay next to him, next to his sword. Both were within reach of his good arm. In the dim of the castle’s mechanical interior, Haxus could just make out a few cracks in the thing’s chassis. The guts were probably damaged, but it shouldn’t be hard to salvage the parts needed to fix and reprogram it from the inside of the Altean ship. He could use the extra support if he intended to survive.

Because he did intend to survive, and after his encounter with the green paladin, Haxus was under no illusions that they had won the battle. Between the unexpected prowess demonstrated by the child paladin and the dim blue – not purple – light that glowed far above him, it was highly unlikely that the battle had ended with victory for the Galra Empire. Sendak was likely dead, and the Alteans and Voltron had almost certainly retaken the rest of the castle.

Survival, then. The enemy had failed to kill him, which meant that there was still a chance at triumph. Sneaking and spying weren’t Haxus’s strong suit – he would much rather face his enemies head-on with a sword – but injured as he was, and stranded in enemy territory, a direct attack just wasn’t practical.

Removing his armor was difficult with two broken limbs, but it was too loud and clunky to wear on a stealth mission. He stripped down to the durable under-armor suit beneath his more protective gear, then used his claws to rip strips from his suit and bind his broken limbs as best he could. It was no substitute for a real healing pod, but it was what he had. Perhaps while he was scavenging repair supplies for the drone, he could find the materials necessary for a functional splint.

Haxus bound his sword to his waist with the inelegant remains of his suit and tucked the unresponsive drone under his broken arm, and crawled towards the vent. First things first – create a mental map of the castle. He shouldn’t be noticed, so long as he stayed in the vents.

* * *

He would estimate that it took several quitents to form a fully accurate mental map of the castle. He was lucky that early on he discovered the castle kitchen, and was able to make the vents above the room a sort of home base. Any information he gathered would be useless to the Empire if he starved before he could escape. During his first excursion to the kitchen, he managed to steal some stick-like cooking instruments and lengths of cloth that would suffice to make a rough set of splints. (Never again would he question the field medicine part of Military training, he vowed.) With his broken limbs properly cared for, moving silently through the vents was a much more feasible venture.

He made sure to take notice of the behavioral patterns of each paladin as he saw them through the vents. One paladin had a tendency to spend time in the kitchen, making food and modifying cooking appliances, even creating new machines of inexplicable culinary purposes. Another could most often be found on the training deck, practicing with the determination that would befit even a galra. A third had a pattern that was hard to pin down – he could be found on the training deck, or in the kitchen, or haplessly flirting with the Altean princess in the castle’s control room. The Champion spent a lot of time in his room, when not wrangling the other paladins for training or spending time himself on the deck.

Apart from a few glimpses, he didn’t see enough of the green paladin to learn the child’s behavior. Something about that was unnerving. The last thing he wanted was to underestimate the child again. Losing to one so young and small once was humiliating enough.

Then again, the more he watched them, the more he came to realize how young they _all_ were. Even the Champion, who was clearly the oldest of the lot, could only be a few years out of childhood himself. How humiliating, for their forces to have been beaten by a handful of children!

This only meant that his intel would be even more necessary. Despite the seeming softness of this species, there was clearly something hard and warlike within them. How else could they hold their own against a galra attack, when so many other species and worlds had fallen?

* * *

It wasn’t until Haxus went searching for parts to repair the drone that he finally found out where the green paladin spent most of his time.

He was halfway out the vent when he heard the door to what he had thought was a storage room open. Lightning fast, Haxus hauled himself backwards into the vent and shut the covering, leaving it open only a crack. The green paladin came into view through the crack, somehow even smaller and more harmless-looking when not in uniform, cradling a cup of steaming liquid in his hands. It was unbelievable that he’d caused so much trouble for the Galra Empire already, Haxus thought to himself. The child was small and weak enough that, had he been born on a galra-controlled planet, he would have likely been culled just to keep weakness from passing on in the genes of their slaves. Yet somehow, this weakling had taken down a trained and decorated galra soldier. Haxus narrowed his eyes as the child dropped artlessly into a sitting position, set down the cup, and reached into a tangle of outdated, miscellaneous parts.

He would have to wait until the paladin left to take his sleep cycle before scavenging for parts. Haxus drew back, the knowledge that he should retreat warring with his instincts that said that the child was currently defenseless and could be taken out _now._ He shook his head and slid carefully, silently back into the vents. Taking down the green paladin would only alert the others to the presence of an enemy in their midst.

His retreat had nothing to do with the sudden, unsettling thought that even without armor and weapons, there was a strong chance that the green paladin would find a way to defeat him again.

Not until the castle lights had been dimmed to represent night for several vargas did he dare venture into the storage room to secure parts for the drone.

* * *

“– course I’m upset! Someone’s been taking my stuff!”

Haxus woke sharply from his sleeping spot in the castle vents at the sound of the green paladin’s angry voice nearly directly beneath him. He cursed furiously to himself – he didn’t dare move and risk being heard with the enemy so close, but remaining in place, knowing how close the enemy was, set him on edge.

“Are you sure, Pidge?” That voice sounded like the Champion, reasonable and measured. “Are you certain you didn’t just misplace it?”

“Yeah, ‘cause no offense, Pidge, but your lab’s a mess.” Haxus wasn’t sure, but he thought that voice belonged to the paladin with erratic behavioral patterns.

“I checked,” the green paladin – Pidge – snapped. “I looked everywhere. Look, if this is a prank, just give it back, _Lance!”_

“Whoa, hey!” the erratic paladin, Lance, protested. “I didn’t take your stuff! I don’t even know what, well, _any_ of it does!”

Cautiously, Haxus inched forward, moving as silently as he could through the vents and hoping that the argument below would cover any arrant noise. With at least three of the paladins unexpectedly congregated beneath him, he needed to get somewhere – anywhere – else in the castle.

“Hey, on the subject of missing stuff,” the paladin who frequented the kitchen added, “we’ve been going through food really, really quickly these days. Like, even things that I’ve measured out and set aside for later keep coming up short.”

Haxus froze, cursing internally. He’d been attempting to keep his food theft minimal in hopes of going unnoticed, but it seemed that they’d caught on anyways. He assumed that the “stuff” the green paladin was missing were the parts he had used to repair the drone, which floated silently in front of his shoulder.

He should have guessed that they would eventually realize there was an intruder in the castle. But he’d thought he had more time! What useful information had he even gathered? Tiny factoids flitted through his mind, mostly useless. The Empire didn’t need to know that one paladin was a shameless flirt, or that the Altean princess frequented the training deck when everyone else was asleep, or that the Champion regularly woke up screaming several vargas before the others.

“What are you saying?” That was the Altean princess. At this rate, Haxus thought, it was safe to assume that all seven of the castle’s inhabitants were directly beneath him. He inched forward again, grimacing at the soft noise of his splinted leg dragging behind him.

“Okay, so this is like, conspiracy-theory levels of crazy,” the kitchen-frequenting paladin said, “but there were a lot of galra here just a few weeks ago, right? Or, uh, a few movements ago. Anyways. Maaaaybe one or two stayed aboard the ship? And are eating our food and, uh, stealing Pidge’s stuff?”

Haxus stilled as the enemies beneath him fell silent.

“That’s… unlikely,” the Champion said, and Haxus couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. “Most of the forces were sentry robots, and we scanned to make sure we got rid of all of those. We all know what happened to Sendak,” he said, sounding somewhat pained, “and there was only one other actual galra, right?”

“Right,” Pidge said. “And I saw him fall from the generator room’s catwalk. He couldn’t have survived that, right?”

One of the men below cleared his throat. “Actually,” the princess’s advisor said, “while it’s highly unlikely, the galra are a very hardy species, and if he fell from the generator room’s catwalk, it’s possible he hit one of the many service platforms connected to the vents! It wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to have survived, in that circumstance.”

There were several long seconds of silence, in which Haxus barely dared to breathe, for fear of alerting the enemy to his presence.

Pidge finally broke the silence. “He went down with Rover,” he said quietly, “and the parts I’m missing are parts that would be useful to repair a drone.”

There was another long stretch of silence, in which Haxus did not dare to move.

“Right,” the princess said finally, her voice wavering slightly. “So, it’s probably nothing, but for the moment, we should behave as if we have a galra spy aboard our ship.” There was silence again for a brief moment.

“Princess, if I may,” the advisor said. “I’ve just run diagnostics to scan the ship for life forms. There’s you and me, and the mice, and the paladins – some ambiguous readings there, we might need to recalibrate – but there is one full-blooded galra aboard the ship, and it appears he is located… Quiznak, he’s right above us!”

Haxus cursed. No more pretense. He sprung forward, crawling through the vents as fast as he could, not bothering to pay attention to the shouts of alarm below him – they meant nothing. He sped away as far as he could, desperately hoping that the paladins would be too scattered to follow the sound of his movements. He drew his sword from its shabby cloth bindings and kicked open the vent to the supply closet, dropping down and surveying his empty surroundings.

“Survey,” he ordered the repurposed drone, pushing it out the door. “Report back to me.” He closed the door behind the thing and shed his splints. His injured leg was weak, and his arm was shaky, but he had healed well enough – and he would never go down without a fight.

Only a few minutes after he’d shed his dressings, he heard footsteps approaching. Haxus palmed his blade and leapt from the storage room, seizing the paladin who ran for him and spinning him around, pulling the child flush against his chest as he raised his sword to the boy’s throat.

The other paladins drew up short at his movements, and Haxus took the chance to press his blade against his captive’s throat. It was with no small amount of satisfaction that he recognized his prisoner as the green paladin. “You will let me pass,” he growled, angling his sword and pressing just hard enough to draw a thin line of blood.

“Let her go!” The paladin who trained like a galra shouted.

Her? Haxus fought to keep the surprise from his face. The green paladin was a girl? It wasn’t that no women galra took up combat positions, but the vast majority of them took either healing positions, or stayed behind to help build up numbers for the empire. Haxus bit back a laugh. That explained how the child had taken him down – the women who chose to fight were nearly always more ferocious than the men.

But regardless, he had her – the green paladin. He tightened his grip on her and wiggled the blade minutely against her throat, grinning as her breath hitched with shock. “Let me through,” he ordered, smiling at the paladins. “I’ll take her and her lion, or she dies.”

The Champion stepped forward, his hands raised. “Okay,” he said evenly. “Don’t hurt her. I’ll take you there.”

Haxus snorted – he wasn’t an idiot. “You’ll all go with me,” he said, allowing his upper lip to curl even as he pulled the blade _just_ away from the green paladin’s neck. “All of you, stay in front of me,” he ordered. “Lead me to her lion, or she dies.”

Pidge snarled something doubtless unpleasant, but she kept pace with him as he walked her to her hangar. The other paladins remained rigid, even as the green lion came into view. It was a good thing the lions all had separate bays, Haxus thought – the other paladins would doubtless come after him, but it would take time.

He couldn’t bring detailed plans of Voltron’s attack to the Empire, but he could bring a lion and a prisoner for interrogation, and that made his survival worth something.

“Move,” he ordered, pressing his hand to the paladin’s shoulder-blades, even as his sword stayed at her throat. The green paladin took a deep breath and pressed her hand against her lion’s head. The creature rumbled, then its great mouth opened. Haxus took the opportunity to shove her forward and look over his shoulder at the remaining paladins. “Follow us, and I will kill her,” he warned before walking the green paladin into the lion’s cockpit, ignoring the shouts of outrage behind him. He remained standing as she sat, letting his sword rest below her ear. “Get us off this ship, then I will give you coordinates,” he ordered.

The paladin swallowed hard. “Got it,” she said, reaching for the controls. Haxus relaxed slightly as the lion exited from the castle, heading out into open space. “So, what, you want me to just fly my lion to the nearest galra base?”

That would be the most efficient route. “For now,” he said.

The paladin nodded. “Gotcha,” she said. “Hey, quick question. Do the galra usually let their hostages keep weapons?”

What –

Haxus grunted in surprise as the green paladin launched herself at him, drawing her strange Altean weapon with one fluid moment. He cursed internally – a rookie mistake, not checking for weapons! He swung his sword at her torso; his teeth clacked together as the weapon struck at an awkward angle, glancing off her armor. The paladin hissed, drew back her Altean weapon, then drove it forward. A thin green – _something_ – shot out of the device, wrapping tight around his sword; with a yell, the girl ripped it from his hands and flung it backwards, the green light dissipating as she did so.

Haxus snarled and leapt to his feet, intending to dislodge the paladin and send her to the ground; she surprised him by leaping backwards, her back connecting with the lion’s control panel, then using her hands to launch herself at him again. This time, the weapon’s green light remained in the form of a small, triangular blade that followed the grip of the weapon. Haxus cursed as he was knocked to the ground, staring up at the wild, furious eyes of the enemy above him. The green paladin let out an unholy noise that could only be a war cry, then drove the weapon down into his shoulder with one hand, the other hand reaching for his head. Haxus barely had time to bring his hands up in defense before the paladin seized him by the ear and slammed his head once, twice, three times against the floor.

His head swam, and red dots swam before his eyes as he struggled to take stock of his condition. He stared at the young pilot, who met his gaze with wild-eyed fury. “I’m no damsel in distress,” she growled, holding the green energy beam to his neck and pressing a finger to her helmet with the other hand. “Shiro, help bring my lion back in, I’m not at the controls,” she growled angrily. “But I’ve got the quiznacking bastard right where we want him.”

* * *

Floating, barely conscious. A part of him was aware that this was very, very bad.

_“Try not to space this one, Shiro.”_

_“I didn’t do that on – you know what, Lance, I’m not going to get into this with you.”_

Something was very, very wrong. Why couldn’t he move? Why was he so… cold?

 _“I’ll handle the interrogation.”_ Something like a thrill of fear ran through him as he registered the words that came from far, far away, muffled and filtered as though spoken behind some sort of barrier. He knew that voice. That voice belonged to someone who had bested him not once, but twice. _“I’ve tweaked the program – it won’t give us direct access to his brain, not without some heavy-duty modifications, but that just lets us keep him from manipulating us with his thoughts, like Sendak did to Shiro.”_

The green paladin. If he could move, Haxus would leap to action – but as it was, he could barely even open his eyes. He lay in stasis, unmoving, unable to do anything.

“Hey, there.” If he could have lurched in surprise, he was sure he would have. The voice was no longer distant, as heard through glass; it echoed in his one good ear, clear and precise and cold. “Yeah, you. Hi. We’ve got some questions for you about the galra, about your quiznacking empire, and, oh, how the heck you managed to hide out for so long aboard our ship.”

Haxus tried to force himself to relax, to clear his mind. So, interrogation. He could survive that – he doubted these Alteans and their paladins would resort to the methods he had been trained to withstand. He would let his silence stall and frustrate them. He would never succumb to their interrogation.

Triumph or death.


End file.
